


Her spirit rose to such a height

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Engagement, F/M, Female Friendship, Late Night Conversations, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 14:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10515753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Ramifications of conversations when there is a full moon.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Lady's Fancy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10512342) by [RedFlagsAndDiamonds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFlagsAndDiamonds/pseuds/RedFlagsAndDiamonds). 



The supply closet was not the most…conducive environment for a fond or more-than-fond embrace, but there was no other accommodation where they might not be interrupted. It was at the far end of the hall and the lock was known to stick and require some judicious jiggling, so there were few accidental visitors and an alarm courtesy of the door’s recalcitrance. They had each sighed over the atmosphere and the lack of comfort, but there was no other situation for them in which Mary’s reputation would not be immediately in tatters should they be discovered and there were only a few more weeks to wait while the banns were read. Mary had suggested a ceremony sooner, under the auspices of the Army, but Jed had refused; he was unwilling to add any further whiff of scandal to their marriage as his divorce would already carry a certain taint it would take years of solemn conformity to erase. So they met late and briefly, taking turns to remind the other that it would not be for long and that the house on Prince Street was standing ready for them, Julia and Miriam installed along with a fourteen year old girl named Keturah who spoke little but Charlotte felt would improve in kind household with a fair mistress. Tonight it seemed their house, their own bedroom, a bed with a second coverlet of moonlight was a million miles away. Until, laughter subsiding, Jed spoke.

“What did you tell her?”

It was his tone more than his words, it always was; there was something rich about it, like mulled red wine or proper coffee with proper cream, something dark and curious and wicked, as she’d said to Emma. She felt a frisson and then everything intensified—the sensation of her muslin chemise beneath her stays, the edge of her collar, the weight of her hair against her neck. They were close but she moved closer to him, a slight alteration, but one that they were both aware of.

“Not very much,” she answered, feeling how warm he was against her, knowing how much warmer he would feel when they lay together, without anything between them.

“Did you speak of us…or your past?” he asked and now they were in uncharted waters. Since that time when he had hurt her so badly, when he spoke of her guilt about Gustav’s death and how she worked to expiate it at Mansion House, they had not returned to the subject of her first marriage in any meaningful way. He had made a few vague, entirely respectful references to it and when she had not said very much in response, he had left it alone. She wondered briefly whether there was some planetary or heavenly change that accounted for the shift in relationships, for Emma’s desire and Henry’s emboldened reaction, for Jed’s inquiry and her own heightened, breathless response. The pause lengthened enough for him to add,

“You needn’t tell me if you don’t want to. It was a private conversation and perhaps you spoke of things you don’t wish to share. With me. I would not make a demand you don’t want to answer, Mary, truly.”

“I want to share with you. Everything. I don’t want secrets,” she said, letting her lips brush against his cheek, reaching her hand into the curls at the nape of his neck. “I told Emma a little of what it had been like for me, that married love is not always so…decorous.” She felt his indrawn breath before she heard it and the image came to her of feeling his bare chest and belly pressed against her, damp with sweat, the scent of their striving bodies mingling with the jug of late-blooming roses beside the bed.

“What else, sweetheart? Or was that all?” he said into her ear. 

What did it mean, what did he imagine—her alone, undressed, waiting for her husband or their conjugal embrace, Mary in the arms of a man he had only seen briefly in a daguerreotype, a man he had only ever known through the few mementos Mary had brought with her. Should she be offended that he held her tighter now to hear her speak of herself, of her union with another man, or only aroused, as she was? Gustav she had loved dearly and he had been worldly in ways she had never quite grasped; she did not think he would mind and it did not alter the past to speak of it.

“He bought me a black velvet ribbon and asked me to wear it,” she explained. Jed had been to Paris, had had mistresses, Lisette and other women she knew without needing to be told; he would understand what she meant. But she expected he would ask.

“Only the ribbon?” he replied, his hand moving softly at her side, up and down, curving at her hip, grazing the side of her breast.

“Yes,” she said. She hadn’t known what pleasure there could be had in her memory shared, that they would both be seeing a vision within their minds that was similar but not the same, to know he imagined how she had readily offered herself to Gustav, how the ends of the ribbon had been lost in her unbound hair. To remember Gustav’s grey eyes upon her and not to see Jed’s dark gaze at she did.

“I won’t ask you that,” he said and she gasped. He had palmed her breast as he spoke and his thumb was against her nipple. She knew, with a sudden conviction, that if they had been married now, in a bed together, his mouth would be there and she would be flushed with the delight of it.

“I prefer the ribbons in your garters, I might wait to untie them. I like the feeling of silk stockings…against my face, my shoulders,” he added. “A little wickedness,” she’d said to Emma, thinking she knew so much, a widow who had been well loved. This was beyond anything she’d done before and her heart was beating furiously with it. To talk this way, oblique and direct, to know there would be such newness between them within the security of their vows, to understand he intended to caress her in ways she was yet unfamiliar with but which upon glimpsing, she desired with an ardent intensity she hadn’t known…was it a little wickedness? Was it wicked at all? 

“Was that too much? Should I not have said it?” he asked, becoming still against her. He sounded apprehensive, gentle and concerned that she would reject him, what he proposed.

“No…I liked it. I like when you talk to me like this. I like to know what you want,” she said and felt him relax. She found herself talking again before she could even think of the words.

“I used to call him by his title…then. But I don’t want to call you Dr. Foster when you make love to me, I only want to call you Jedediah, I want my voice saying your name to be the only way you ever hear it…”

“Dear God!” he exclaimed and then turned his head, kissing her swiftly, deeply, one hand at her cheek to keep her close to him. His tongue was in her mouth, not tasting her but consuming, as possessive as she’d ever known him to be, as she’d never known him to be, as she always wanted him to be now that she knew. His hand dropped from her breast and before she could make a sound to register dismay, it was stroking her bottom through her skirt, pulling her closer to him. She wished there was nothing between them and she loved the barrier of the petticoats, his trousers, the distance as erotic as their skin would have been, would soon be. She loved him so very much and something about that allowed her a moment of clarity.

“Jed, love. Stop,” she said and he did but she could feel the tension in him, the urge to keep moving. “We are going to have to leave this room and I cannot walk through the halls as Nurse Mary if you…persist.”

“Who would you be, then?” he asked. She had caught his interest and he was not irritated or ashamed. He was not calm yet but he could be and soon enough.

“What do you call me? To yourself, in the night, when you wish I were beside you?” she replied softly. She was reminding him that she was more than one woman and she was finding out the answer to a question she had longed to know.

“May, I call you May, lovely May, darling, dearest May,” he said, each time touching her with fingers that were lightly tender, at her wrist, the apple of her cheek, the slope of her shoulder.

“I would be May then and I don’t want to be. Not here, not until I can be Mrs. Foster as well so that only you and I know that you are not thinking of me that way,” she said. He ducked closer to her for a moment but only kissed the tip of her nose and looked at her with his dark eyes very bright, his teeth white in his broad grin.

“I understand why Mrs. Hopkins came to you. How very wise you are, how clever, how astute,” he remarked.

“Enough. You’ll make me blush,” she said, waving her hand a little, startled when he laughed aloud, a full, delighted sound that made her murmur “Hush” without thinking.

“That will make you blush? Of everything, that is what will make you blush? Oh, May, you are adorable. That’s all I’ll say, so you may return to being Nurse Mary, though I think we are the only two still awake at this hour unless Private Williams has woken with a nightmare again,” Jed said, chuckling.

“I hope he hasn’t. It takes an age to settle him and I don’t think I can bear to sing ‘Camptown Races,’ until he falls back to sleep,” she said. It was true and she needed to say it, to let them end this interlude. Soon enough, only sleep would need to intervene and then whatever light came with the winter dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> I just couldn't resist returning to Mary and Jed in the supply closet. My title is from Emily Dickinson. "Camptown Races" was written by Stephen Foster in 1850.


End file.
